A religious fundamentalist society swiftly takes away women’s autonomy — and their rights to their own bodies. If you think the plot of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, now widely studied, sounds familiar, you’re not alone: the author agrees.

In response to a fan who tweeted, “I read The #HandmaidsTale for the first time during the Obama administration & even that honeymoon wasn’t enough to make it seem unrealistic,” the author responded, “Yes it does seem like the pause before whatever it is that’s happening now ... ”

Atwood’s book, about a woman named Offred who serves as a sexual surrogate to a family that’s having trouble conceiving, will be released as a TV adaptation on Hulu in April.

The author has been vocal about the story’s ties to today’s political climate. In a letter she shared through PEN/America in January, she cautioned against “dictators of any kind.” She began the letter with a quote from the novel: “Freedom, like everything else, is relative.”

If thereâs anything we sci-fi fans relish, itâs a good end-of-the-world plot. Chaos induced by a worldwide flu-like epidemic? Sign us up! Massive asteroid? Sure! Stephensonâs take on the apocalypse focuses more on how humanity would respond politically, making for an epic volume worth embarking on. A few survivors remain after the world as we know it ends, and they form seven disparate societies, comprised of seven distant races. For 5,000 years, these groups form their own new traditions. Stephensonâs story centers on the moment in their histories when they finally return to Earth.